Grace
by Lady Ophelia
Summary: It exists without explanation because it doesn't need one and never has. It's who they are that will save them or kill them in the end.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** If I owned Supernatural, and had JP and JA at my beck and call, I would have NO time for fanfiction, I promise you that. No time. Very busy. Yes sirree bob. 

**Warnings:** Just language, they are young men who hunt… things… and were raised by their father. Don't be shocked by potty mouths. Also angst. You know, 'cause I could.

**Chapter One**

A modest crowd had gathered to watch the rugged young man play pool. Outwardly, he preened beneath the admiring gazes, flirting harmlessly with local girls either too young to be out so late or too old to be so taken in by a quick smile, however charming. Inwardly, his attention was fixed on his brother seated in a quiet—well, quieter—corner, nursing a bottle of water and what appeared to be a much worse migraine then he'd let on. Dean squinted at the tall figure, as usual not quite fitting right in the chair he was hunched in, and listened to his own 'sixth sense'.

He flashed a patented, better-luck-next-time smirk at his opponent. Through the blue smoke haze of the bar, his baby brother saw the smile and sighed in relief, standing and shrugging on his jacket. Sam headed towards the door, hearing pool balls falling into holes in quick succession behind him. With a jingle he was out in the fresh cold silver of the snowy night, inhaling deeply and feeling the frozen air clear his head slightly.

Another jingle, and he felt his brother's familiar presence behind him, clean and bright. _Snow._ That helped his headache, too. He was noticing things like that more and more often, now. He was tired of noticing them and tired of noticing that he noticed them.

Or maybe he was just tired. Tired and overanalyzing. Tired of overanalyzing.

Dean watched Sam, standing directly in front of him in the spiraling snow, lit strange greens and yellows from the buzzing bar signs. The taller man was drawn inward, not noticing his brother in front of him. Scrutinizing his features, Dean read his expression. He knew his brother's expressions, all his tics.

No vision. He didn't need to ask.

He didn't yet realize it wasn't visual cues he was reading.

He deliberately bumped into Sam as he headed towards the car, getting his attention without having to delve into his thoughts and feelings. It was Winchester-speak. _Hey, dude, you okay?_

The crunch-slush of footsteps through snow was answer enough. The slight push as Sam passed him turning towards the passenger side added attitude. _I'm fine, lighten up._

Sliding into his seat, Dean waited a long moment before unlocking the passenger side, allowing his power as big brother and 'guy with the keys' to be felt. Sam gave the requisite sigh of younger brother patient condescension as the Impala pulled out.

It was one of those random moments when Dean was glad he didn't die.

Reaching over to push a cassette into the player, Sam pretended he hadn't noticed Dean smile. Metallica blasted from the speakers. _I'm glad your still here, too._

Lazily flicking on the wipers, Dean stopped pretending not to smile. It's hard parlay Metallica into a chick-flick moment. Only a Winchester could do it.

Only a Winchester…

_But it wasn't always that way, Sam…_

Dean had long since dropped off, lulled by the familiar unfamiliarity of over-cleaned motel blankets and pillows and the buzzing of cheap electric heat. Sam mused silently that they had been on the road too long when having no home became home, when the strange became familiar. He shifted slightly beneath the unfortunate sea-foam knit blanket, discipline and long practice keeping him from rolling restlessly in his sleeplessness. The inevitable mattress squeaks would wake Dean, who would then attempt to maintain some bizarre idea of brotherly solidarity by staying awake with him, and someone ought to get some sleep.

Sam rolled his eyes towards the electric clock. Three minutes since he'd last looked. Fan-_frigging_-tastic. If he went to sleep now, he might get four hours of sleep, barring, uh… interruptions. Four hours was okay. He could function on four hours. He started counting backwards. He used to start at one hundred… he'd recently changed to one thousand. It was better than thinking, or remembering. Remembering before sleep was a bad… bad idea…

999… 998… 997…

The sheets smelled strange… like industrial bleach. His sheets didn't smell like that. They smelled like summer, 'cause Jess had coconut lime body lotion that she always put on before bed, and he'd fall asleep with his head on her soft shoulder and she smelled like the beach and Jess loved the beach… his arm reached over to the empty side of the bed before he could stop it.

Shit.

You'd think he'd have figured it out by now.

976… 975… 974… 973…

He kept his eyes closed, relaxed, let his body feel heavy, let his mind drift, blank… he breathed evenly, hoping imitating sleep would encourage it to come. Systematically he cleared his mind, shutting Jess and her coconut lime smell ruthlessly behind the door marked '_Excruciating_: Avoid'. Precious little of Jess was left outside that door, these days.

It wasn't really fair, not to Jess, not for Jess who'd never, never once shut a door on Sam, but neither was his life, and he knew he could only bear up beneath so much before shattering irreparably. Some memories cut from every angle, and Jess was one of them.

Sam let himself drift, empty and reaching, and it wasn't until he felt the newly familiar feeling of pulling back from reality that he realized his mistake. His mind was flooded with sensory input that sure as hell wasn't coming from his actual senses, and he managed a gasped, "Fucking A!" before being pulled under completely.

_But it wasn't always that way, Sam…_

_Warm, golden autumn sunlight spilled lazily through bare windows onto the fresh mopped wood floor of an empty room. The walls were also bare, and sported a new-ish looking coat of baby blue paint. Sam felt like he should recognize the room, but he didn't. The whole house was empty, his new senses told him, and had been for some time. He strode to the window, looking out for landmarks. Wait._

_Wait one freaking minute. That—the tree. Son-of-a—it's God damned freaking Lawrence. Again._

_Beautiful. _

_A black Chevy Impala pulled up. Sam attempted to restrain his non-existent surprise. A suspiciously familiar ex-marine got out of the driver's side, opening the passenger door with a flourish of overdone chivalry and a grin. Sam stepped closer to the window, interested despite himself. _

_A pretty blonde emerged from the door, with huge eyes only for the house in front of her. Sam could read it in her face. This house was her dream. She positively pounced on his father, hugging him fiercely around the neck. Sam could hear her giddy laughter. He shut his eyes to block out the horrific irony. _

_Oh, god, please, this is just cruel…_

_When he opened his eyes again, a small boy had joined them from the back seat of the Impala, Lord, look at Dean! Obviously not more than a year or two old, if that, he could hardly stand on his own. Mary propped him on her hip, whispering into his tiny ear and making him giggle. _

_Sam felt something twist inside him… he pressed his hand against the glass as the family entered the house beneath him. _

_He could hear their voices echoing through empty rooms beneath him, exclaiming over rooms and closets and such pretty moldings. The sense of the house shifted as the living voices moved through it. It filled with anticipation and excitement, joy. His family's joy filled the house like bright sunlight._

_The house hadn't felt like this when he and Dean had visited it. The darkness wasn't here yet. He realized that was why he hadn't recognized the room right away… the shadow was missing._

_He heard feet on the stairs, and small feet stomping through the hall with happy abandon. Obviously little Dean could stand when he felt like it, and Sam smiled to know his headstrong ways were more Dean than John's training._

_Mary's softer footsteps followed close after, and Sam's heart stopped as small Dean burst through the doorway, hiding against the wall and covering his eyes. Sam tilted his head, puzzled. What on earth…_

_Dean giggled, and Mary poked her head around the doorframe, spotting her baby and smiling. Stepping back into the hall, she raised her voice in confusion. _

"_Dean? Where'd you go, silly?"_

_Tiny Dean giggled and kept his eyes covered. _

"_John, is Dean down there with you?" Her voice carried a note of playfulness, and John replied in the same way._

"_Well, now, I don't think so, Mary. Maybe he ran away to the circus."_

_Dean's giggling became wilder, and he peeked at the door through his fingers. Sam stepped away in shock, his back hitting the wall. He'd never heard his father's voice like that. Sure, they'd played some when he was really young, but he'd never sounded…sounded happy. He'd never heard Dean laugh like that._

_He'd never heard his mother laugh at all._

_Mary put her hand on her chin and adopted a thoughtful pose. "Well, I guess they could use an extra monkey. But I don't know what I'll do without MY little monkey…" Her voice affected a sad tone on the last part. "I sure wish my Dean monkey would come home to me!"_

_Dean looked surprised at her tone, although this was obviously an old game, and jumped into the doorway. "Mommy! I'm back!"_

_Mary gasped is false surprise, snatching Dean up off the floor. "Oh my goodness, we missed you so much! Yes we did! I think I'll have to punish you for running off to the circus, you silly monkey!"_

_In the doorway of the room in which she would one day die, Mary Winchester tickled her baby boy until they both were shrieking with laughter._

_Sam had never felt further from Dean then he did at that moment, not even when he left for Stanford, not even in that god-forsaken asylum. He had to get out of this place… had to get out… he pushed, as hard as he could, God, even seeing Jess die had to be better than this—_

_Jess—_

_Oh, lord, how much more…_

"Sam! Sammy!"

Dean sat on the edge of his brother's bed, shaking the taller man carefully. Sam had occasionally come out of these—there had to be a better word than visions—still fighting whatever he had seen. But he wasn't really fighting this. The look on his face though, Dean recognized. He could always read his brother… it was the look he'd worn after the asylum, after Jess, on the way to that faith healer… lonely pain, anguished, cold, lonely pain. He put the asprin he held ready in his hand onto the night table.

Gently he smoothed back Sam's bangs in a way he never would if his brother was awake, barring certain near death events, of course, which he had shut away in his mind in a file marked 'this absolutely did NOT happen'.

He couldn't control this, and he hated that. This was something Sam had to fight alone, and Sam had never fought anything alone while Dean could help it. Grinding his back teeth together, he tried to channel his fury at the universe in general. Sammy was wearing down under the weight of his—fuck, is visions really the only word? Damn, need to get a thesaurus. Sam would know a better word, if they ever sat down and talked about this. Of course, this was the one freaking thing in the world that chatty Sammy refused to discuss, which was okay because Dean secretly hoped that not talking about would make it go away.

Not that this method had ever worked for the Winchesters in the past.

Shit.

You'd think he'd have figured it out by now.

They were gonna have to talk about it. He was sure there was a way he could help, could fix this, if he only knew more. Dean couldn't be helpless, he didn't know how. He felt like they were rushing towards something. Something he couldn't see or stop. He felt like his brakes had been cut.

Something's beginning, Sam said.

No shit Sherlock.

Beneath his hands, the Sherlock in question jerked awake. Dean calmly handed over the asprin, followed by water. Sam dutifully swallowed them, and sat upagainst the headboard, dragging his knees up to his chest. He looked small, and that worried Dean, because it's pretty damn hard to look small when you're 6'4".

This was new. Visions—seriously, not going to call them that— usually got Sam moving… action, someplace to go, someone to help. He studied his brother; he knew all his looks, and the answer would come. Wait… he hadn't seen this in years…

When they were younger, Sam had always worried himself sick when they fought with each other. Always afraid Dean would stop loving him… wouldn't play with him or protect him anymore. Dean always figured it was because they never had any permanent friends other than each other, always meeting people and leaving. Eventually Sam had come to trust that Dean loved and wanted him no matter what, even if he didn't really say it. Dean had taught him that, in his own careful way.

This was that look. The what-if-Dean-doesn't-really-love-and-need-me look.

Well, shit then.

Even that god-forsaken asylum hadn't pulled out this look.

"So… rough night?"

Sam sighed, tracing patterns on the sheets. "I'd rather not—"

"Too bad. Was it a," oh, come on with this crap word, "a vision?"

Sam's hazel eyes softened, and Dean knew he was letting it replay in his mind's eye. He waited.

"Yes..no…eh, maybe?" Sam seemed uncharacteristically uncertain. Dean played it off with sarcasm.

"Nice to see Stanford's money wasn't wasted on you, Einstein. What did you see?"

More patterns traced on the sheets. Dean looked down at the glass in his hand, waiting it out. "The past. It was the past. Your past."

Dean's fingers stilled on the glass. He didn't want to look up, to see that earnest, honest Sammy face. Awkward… it was very awkward.

His eyes still on his sheets, Sam decided to rescue Dean. Why he was seeing the past, Dean's past, of all things, could be dealt with in the morning, over coffee and a healthy dose of sanity and daylight. For now…

"You really were a goofy looking kid."

Dean smirked, "At least I grew out of it."

Putting the glass down, he climbed back into his own bed, knowing Sam would be able to talk more after over-analyzing. Sammy never entered an emotional moment unprepared. Tomorrow would be better.

It had to be.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own anything, and promise to return what I've borrowed in like new condition.

"_It's an extraordinary idea, that we can restore what has been shattered. In fact it's our responsibility to try, each of us, to make our world whole again."_

_Myla_ _Goldberg_

_Bee Season_

**Chapter Two**

Dean polished off his second Egg McMuffin, and glanced over at Sam in the passenger seat before stuffing the wrapper back in the empty bag. They were heading up into the mountains, towards what should be a fairly easy gig with a haunted inn. Dean had actually gotten the call from Missouri Mosley, as the new owners of the inn were old friends of hers. Apparently, the spirits were harmless, mostly just frightening the guests with sounds and lights shows. It was a lot tamer than their usual work, but the owners were willing to pay for peace of mind and Dean wanted to take a step back after what happened in Michigan. Sam had been repressing so hard since last week that Dean was surprised he hadn't yet given himself a hernia. Half a sausage McMuffin sat, ignored, on the dashboard while Sam fiddled restlessly with his leather wristband. Frowning, Dean turned his face back towards the road, kneading the steering wheel in agitation.

Sam needed to start eating. Not eating better—that would imply that he was eating something, which he was not—but he had to start eating. Despite his words to Sam in that oh-so-woodsy motel room, he could tell that something was dragging the younger man under. They hadn't since mentioned the conversation they'd had about Sam's visions and Max and mysteriously mobile china hutches, but Dean had meant every word of what he'd said. Every damn word.

He knew how Sam's mind worked. By now, his memories of Max's death were probably way more horrifying than the actual event had been, and Sammy was beating himself up trying to figure a way he could have saved them all. All that, and the memory of seeing Dean shot in the head. Last night had been the first night Sam had not dreamed again of seeing his brother shot at point-blank range. More than anything Dean wished he could take that away from Sam, the memory of that vision. In a strange way, though, seeing his little brother's complete horror and trauma at what he had seen had healed the emotional wounds from the asylum that Dean hadn't realized he was still carrying. That and Sam's behavior when he was sick made Dean feel guiltily warm inside.

Sam had visibly proven that he would move heaven, earth, and china hutches to save Dean.

And while knowing that was not worth Sam's trauma, it helped Dean in more ways than he was willing to admit.

Silence reigned between them, a deep, windless, uncrossable chasm. Ever since Michigan, and especially the… ahem… _dream_ of the night before, Sam had felt far away from Dean. He was pulling away somehow, pulling inward, going deeper inside himself than he ever had before. Dean wasn't sure he would continue to be able to reach Sam if he kept it up.

Sam was drowning somehow, and Dean felt as though he was pushing away attempts at help or rescue. Dean was willing to follow him as far down as he had to… but he was afraid that this had something to do with the visions, some strange side effect. What if there were side effects? Those headaches couldn't be natural. Somehow, something wasn't letting him reach his brother. He was afraid it was Sam, sensing in himself the falling motion, the spiraling destruction that was so apparent to Dean, and was pulling away to collapse in peace, like an animal hides when it's ill. He was attempting to shield his own vulnerability and Dean's… to spread himself to cover all the holes.

But he was spread too thin as it was, and anyway, filling the weak points was Dean's job. Taking the hits was Dean's job. Always had been.

Sammy might be psychic but Dean would be damned if he was going stand in front. If anything came, it came at Dean first.

"So, you want that last hash brown?" _Dude, eat something. Seriously, NOT a request._

Sam didn't look up from his lap. "Nah, you can have it." _I've taken enough from you already—keep the breakfast food._

Dean gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, watching loose snow drift lazily across the road in front of him. Focusing on the snow, thank you Wyoming mountain springtime, and on driving carefully on the steep incline lasted for about a millisecond before he yanked the wheel to the left, pulling off the deserted route.

"Fuck this shit. I don't want the hash brown. Don't try to give it to me." His green eyes were bright and dark at once, and he didn't release his grip on the steering wheel. If he was going to do this, this girly fuzzy shit, he was going to do it with a good firm grip on his Impala, which was, sadly, the most permanent element in his life.

Sam, who had slammed against his seatbelt at the sudden turn, stared at him like he'd lost his mind. "Fine, whatever, I was just saying—"

Dean couldn't look at him. "Well, don't 'just say'! I don't even like hash browns, I didn't buy it for me, it's yours, Sam, I bought it for _you_ so eat it already!"

Sam tilted his head in the way that he'd been doing since forever, and Dean had long since realized that when Sam did that, tilted his head like that and focused his eyes just so, he was about to say something and be right about it, too. Damn him.

"This isn't about hash browns, is it?"

Lowering his head, Dean breathed deeply for a minute. He couldn't, absolutely could not, believe he was doing this. He'd be signing up for his uterus any day now. "You're not eating enough, okay? You ate, like, half a McMuffin. Who eats half a McMuffin? Hell, when you were fifteen you could eat four of those, easy."

Sam looked out the window into the blinding brightness of the snowy morning. "If this is about last night, I'm sorry. It was stupid dream and I shouldn't even have told you."

And that was the very end of Dean's patience. "Dammit, Sam! Just, _dam it!_ Look, I know we haven't really talked about this Haley Joel shit, but you've gotta tell me this stuff. I can't—you have to—I need to know what's going on. So… so you know… tell me about it."

Sam went pale at Dean's words, and it was obvious that he'd heard each and every bit of the subtext, loud and clear. Flexing his jaw in frustration, he looked around the car as if to find something else to focus the conversation on. "You wanna talk about it? You! I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be my line."

The steering wheel creaked from the pressure being exerted on it. "Samuel."

As suddenly as the warning was issued in Dean's lowest register, the voice that had laid the steel foundations of Sam's childhood, he had his little brother's full, wide-eyed attention. There was a second of silence, and Dean could see Sam composing his words ahead of himself, something he himself had never been able to do.

"I dreamt about you, Dad, and Mom going to the house in Lawrence for the first time. You hid in an empty room and Mom pretended she couldn't find you. Mom and Dad joked you'd run away to the circus to be a monkey. She tickled you, right in the doorway of—of the nursery, and you laughed and laughed. That was it." There was a whisper of wistfulness in Sam's voice that cut Dean in a place he hadn't realized was vulnerable.

Looking over, Sam saw that Dean was pale, which reminded him of Dean dying, which led straight to his vision of Dean getting shot, and Sam wished desperately that he could turn his mind off for a while. "It was just—just a stupid dream. I don't think we're meant to do anything about it. No big deal, Dean."

Dean stared straight ahead, his eyes unfocused. "I don't remember that day. I was too young, I guess. I remember playing that game with Mom, though."

He didn't see Sam wince. "Look, it seemed pretty random. Let's just assume it was a fluke until something happens that says otherwise." Sam was pleased his voice didn't telegraph his pain for once in his life. Maybe he was getting better at lying.

Dean's reply was to pull back onto the road, still pensive. Sam waited for the other shoe to drop, knowing there was no way he'd gotten the last word. "Well… don't, you know, worry about this shit so much, kid. This job should be cake, so relax a little, okay?"

There was a pause, and then Dean looked over at Sam, his color finally coming back. "I can't believe I had to make you talk about something. Where's that sensitive Sammy I know and—you know, allow to live?" His voice was sarcastic. Normal service had apparently resumed.

Sam sighed. "You know I'm not eating that hash brown, right?"

It was nearly full dark by the time the brothers pulled into the parking lot of the Inn at Point Peter. It was snow covered, quaint, and picturesque in ways that scared Dean more than a little. The rest of the ride up had been tensely silent with a light background of Black Sabbath, for ambience. Sam knew Dean was thinking about the vision and Dean knew Sam knew that he was thinking about it, and both were thinking about how they were never going to talk about it again. Ever, if at all possible.

Sam craned his neck to see the building through the windshield and the thickly falling snow. The inn was styled after a cabin… if cabins had four stories and two expansive wings. "Geez, it's a lot bigger than I thought. If these spirits decide to hide, we could be here for weeks."

Dean seemed unimpressed, simply swinging out of the car to stretch his legs with relief. "Well, it'll be a damn sight nicer than some of the places we've been staying. C'mon, Sam, live it up a little. We're getting paid to stay somewhere for once."

Following his brother up the snowy stairs with his duffle slung over one shoulder, Sam grimaced. "Somewhere haunted," he groused.

Dean sighed, inwardly pleased that Sam had come back to himself enough to complain. "Wow, gee, Sam, haunted? Really? 'Cause we've never encountered that before." Smirking over his shoulder at his younger brother, Dean paused at the door to stomp the snow off his boots. "The owner said they were harmless ghosts, just annoying. You know, like you. Harmless and annoying."

Pushing the door open over Dean's head, _say what you want I'm annoying and still taller,_ Sam rolled his eyes expressively. "They just haven't met you yet. You could incite a nun to violence."

Dean huffed. "Hey, I was eleven! And I wasn't taking the Lord's name in vain, I was checking to see if she was a demon!"

"Call it what you want… you still ran from a seventy year old woman with a ruler."

Spotting the front desk, Dean brushed haughtily past his still smirking brother. "Unlike you, Sam, I don't go in for that kind of thing. I seem to recall you and Sister Perpetua getting along very… very well."

Standing just off Dean's left shoulder as was his habit, Sam leaned over to mutter in his ear. "Eww, Dean, just ew."

Not bothering to reply, Dean turned on the charm for the young concierge. "Hello, miss… Beth, is it? I'm Dean Winchester, and this is my assistant, Sam. We're here to see the owner, Chris Walker. Is he here?"

Beth, who had seemed rather charmed by Dean, and who upon closer examination was way too young for either of them, looked suddenly disenchanted. "Oh… the ghostbusters. DAD! PEOPLE FOR YOU!" Sniffing at the two brothers, she retreated behind her magazine.

Dean wasn't sure who to be more annoyed at, the haughty girl or his snickering brother. As a man, presumably Walker, appeared from the back, he heard Sam's voice in his ear again. "Felony, Dean. Felony."

Yup, definitely more annoyed at Sam. "Thanks, counselor, 'cause I hadn't figured that out from her copy of Teen People." The teen in question cracked her gum as if on cue.

"The Winchesters?" The man asked, coming over to shake Dean's hand heartily. He was a giant man, easily taller than Sam, but broader and heavily muscular. He was dressed in flannel and dark jeans with boots. He looked more like a lumber jack than the owner of a prosperous inn and resort.

"Yes sir, I'm Dean and this is my brother Sam."

Sam stepped forward, extending a hand towards the older man. To the brothers' surprise, Walker looked uncomfortable and ignored the hand. "Nice to meet you both, boys," his tone was genial, glossing over the tension and unease on the brother's faces as Sam slowly withdrew his hand. "I'm Chris Walker, and I see you've met Beth, my daughter. I'm glad you could make it up here so quick. Have any troubles on the road?"

Tuning out the small talk, trusting Dean to handle it, Sam reeled silently behind his brother. Why had Walker looked at him like that? Was it possible… that maybe he could sense Sam's strangeness? Perhaps Missouri had told him when recommending them for the job? All he had wanted was to be normal, or as normal as possible… now he was being avoided by normal people, singled out like the freak he was. When had he become untouchable? How long until Dean became uncomfortable around him? Already they could barely discuss what was happening to him… and after Max…

Continuing the friendly banter that was the prelude to business of any kind west of the Mississippi, Dean could feel Sam withdrawing behind him, internalizing the blow he'd just been dealt where it could undoubtedly do the most damage. He knew Sam would be hurt by the rejection, even from a stranger, and it played into all his most vulnerable places at the moment. Damn it. He eyed Walker with anger and suspicion, not really caring that much if his emotions showed on his face. Not shaking Sam's hand was a warning bell. Sam charmed people—that's what he did, without effort or pretense, just his gangly sweet, boy without a mother looks. Usually it amused Dean to watch, but this was just weird. There's no legitimate reason—nothing honest and above board—not to shake Sam's hand. But Walker knew Missouri, knew what she did, and although Dean couldn't see her giving out their secrets, it was possible he knew about Sam.

He might be hiding something he was afraid Sam could pick up on. But what? It wasn't like Sam could do that anyway. Yet. Ugh, not going there. Why call them here if there was something to hide? Missouri wouldn't have sent them into danger.

Would she?

"Well, son, it's a bit late to get started tonight. Here's the key to your room, two double beds, like ya'll asked, just up the stairs on the first floor. We've never had any activity on that floor, so I figured you'd be the most comfortable there."

"Sounds great. Thanks. We'll get started bright and early tomorrow morning." Dean took the keys as Sam wordlessly moved towards the main staircase in the center of the lobby. Giving Walker one last annoyed look, he hurried after his brother, catching up with him as he reached the top of the stairs.

They headed down the hall to the room in silence. Dean handed the key to Sam when they reached the door, smiling slightly as his brother bent to slide the card into the slot. Waiting for just the right moment as the door swung open, Dean slapped his little brother firmly on the back of the head, before passing him into the room.

"OW! Crap, Dean, what the hell?" Sam yelped, dropping his duffle in surprise.

From inside the room, his brother's voice came, the calm, implacable, of-course-I'm-right-I'-Dean voice of Sam's earliest memories. "Just in case you thought I was afraid to touch you."

Sam was silent, warmed that Dean could so easily read him, still, always. Then Dean's voice emerged again from the depths of the room.

"SWEET! A mini-bar!"

Smiling, Sam shut the door behind him, locking it firmly against the coldness of the inn's owner. It wasn't much, but it made him feel better.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own them… but how cool would it be if I did? What? Well, it would be cool for _me,_ anyway…

"_All motion is relative. Perhaps it is you who have moved away—by standing still."_

_J. Lawrence and R.E. Lee_

_Inherit the Wind_

**Chapter 3**

Sam was staring silently at the dark ceiling, listening to his brother breathe.

There was a creeping sort of quiet growing between the brothers, stretching slowly and stealthily between them like ivy inching up brickwork that you never quite notice until the bricks are gone. Sometimes, like when they'd entered the hotel room earlier, it was companionable and warm, filled with the secret brotherly language without words, the silent communication of two intelligent, intense boys who'd only ever had each other. Sometimes the silence spoke, laughed and joked, brimming with smirks and quirked eyebrows and I-remember-when. It was silent even in Dean's steady voice in the dark, go-back-to-sleep-Sam and nothing's-gonna-hurt-you. Sam knew Dean loved him. He had no reason to doubt it. It was endless and unfailing and permanent, like the earth beneath Sam's feet. Sure, they never said the words, never shared or talked things out, but the earth can't talk either and that doesn't mean it's going to fall out from beneath your feet.

It just is. It exists without explanation because it doesn't need one and never has.

Until he got electrocuted, even when he'd worried Sam had never believed that Dean could die. He'd never contemplated a world without Dean. How do you imagine the world without the world?

Because Dean had always existed for Sam. There had never been a Sam without Dean. It was impossible, improbable, like trying to think backwards.

Once upon a time, though, there had been a Dean without Sam. He'd always known it, of course, but he'd never realized.

The past is hard to ignore when it walks up and slaps you in the face.

There had been a Dean before Sam. A bright, happy, shining child… a beautiful family in a house made beautiful by them. Dean would never have that back. Dad would never have that back.

Flesh and blood and fire can't be mended. Dean loved Sam, but it would never give him back what he'd lost. Sam couldn't change it or fix it or take it back, because fixing and mending and putting-back-together had never been Winchester skills. John had taught his sons how to hunt and kill, destroy and vanquish, even how to rescue, but not how to heal. He taught them how to travel and keep low and leave, but not how to stay. He'd taught them how to survive, but not how to live.

What little Sam did know of these things, of healing and staying and living, he'd learned from Dean.

Dean healed, tended Sam's wounds and sat with him when he was sick, and doesn't say much about Jess because he understands that sometimes time is all there is. Dean stayed; he'd never left, except when Sam pushed him away. Sam knew how to leave, his father had taught him, and he knew how to stay, to be one step behind Dean or in the passenger seat, to be nowhere in particular and still be home. Dean lived, maybe not the way Sam would choose but it wasn't Sam's choice to make and whatever Dean did, he always owned it.

Dean loved Sam. Sam had no reason to doubt it. He knew he loved his brother just as much. But he couldn't undo what had been done. He couldn't give back years or pain, couldn't make the grief disappear like mist in sunlight. He couldn't unmake his family's past, not by staying or leaving, not by living or dying.

Sam wondered who his brother would be if he hadn't become who he now was. The thought kept him awake in the smallest hours of the night, watching the shadows of snow drift lazily across the window.

"WHAT THE HELL!"

Sam jerked awake, squinting into the ridiculous over-brightness of the winter morning pouring merrily through the window. It wasn't Dean's something's-here-to-murder-us-horrifically-in-our-sleep-so-anytime-you'd-like-to-help-Sam shout, so he didn't scramble for a weapon or fling himself off the bed. He was actually very lucky he didn't attempt to jump out of bed because as his eyes adjusted to the light he saw what had upset Dean.

Their beds had moved during the night, going from practically right next to each other in the center of the spacious room to shoved up against opposite walls. Sam's bed was pushed flush against the window and Dean's was against the door. They were as far apart as was it was possible to be and still be in the same room. None of the other furniture had been disturbed, and neither brother had felt anything during the night.

Swinging out of bed, Sam joined his older brother in the center of the room, his worries of the previous night forgotten. They both looked down at the circles of salt and holy water, undisturbed and unbroken where the beds used to be.

"That's—this—_this isn't possible," _Sam stuttered, eyeing the pristine circles uneasily. "How could a spirit have moved our beds without waking us? Without breaking the circles?"

"Well, obviously it's _possible, _Sam," Dean snarked, disturbed that something had been in their room while they slept and he hadn't known, that something had sniffed at their protections and wards with disdain. That something—let's face it, probably attracted here by Sammy, because wasn't that always the way lately—had flounced between him and his brother while they slept. Wait a minute—

Sam.

"Hey—are we, you know, sure a spirit did this?" Dean asked, turning to squint at his brother who was crouching by the salt circles. Sam looked up, confused.

"What, do you think maybe it was something else? Maybe a demon, or something?" Dean could see the wheels turning in Sam's head as he catalogued all the things that were immune to salt and could move things from a distance. He waited, and saw when Sam's mind connected those two traits. Something that was undisturbed by wards and holy water. Something that could move objects.

Something like Max.

Sam's jaw clenched, and he turned away, running his fingers over the salt circle. "No, Dean."

Dean crossed his arms over his chest, knowing Sam was uncomfortable with this but knowing also that they had to _know_, so he pushed. "Look, Sam, I'm just saying, are we sure you didn't—you know—have a weird dream and wiggle your nose in the middle of the night?"

"NO, Dean. No. I—I couldn't have done this. You said it before, that was a one time thing. I saw you die and I had a freak adrenaline rush because I wanted to save you." Even as Sam said the words, he heard himself. Heard what he was saying… _because I wanted to save you._ But, no—it had felt like a punch, unnatural and wrenching. It couldn't have been him. It was a one time thing. Dean said so. Dean knew Sam—Sam knew himself.

But Dean was already backing off, letting Sam have his space, to breath and collect himself. Sam had said no, it couldn't be him, and so it hadn't been him and that was the end of it. "Yeah—you're probably right. Besides, even if it had been you that wouldn't explain why we didn't wake up."

Looking at the two heavy, hardwood double beds, one of which was blocking the door, Dean sighed. "So, if you didn't put them there, I'm guessing that's a 'no' on you being able to put them back, huh?"

Both brothers were sore by the time they headed down for breakfast in the main dining room. The beds had been just as heavy as they'd looked, and Dean hoped they could deal with whatever was haunting this place, because otherwise they were totally getting charged for the scratches they'd left in the hardwood floor. Sam plodded along beside him, looking like he'd gotten his usual amount of sleep. Just enough to give Casper time to redecorate. Freaking feng-shui ghosts… next thing you know they were going to wake up with a Queer Eye for the Undead Guy makeover.

Dean hated inexplicable shit. He dealt with it all the time, which didn't help his tolerance any, either. _We deal with the unexplained all the time…_

_It's just another thing, Sam…_

A glint of silver caught Dean's eye as Sam pulled open the door to the dining room. Sam was carrying his knife… his curved blade, with the blessing from that bishop Dad had bri—saved. That bishop he had saved. Dean had throwing dagger with the same blessing… he hadn't carried it since Lawrence.

Dean wasn't sure he liked where Sam's head was right now. He was obviously uncomfortable with something… it was more than just the beds. But if Sammy was getting a vibe, whether or not he realized it himself, which, Dean realized, maybe he didn't, than that was more than enough for him.

He made a mental note to get the dagger out of the trunk after breakfast.

Speaking of breakfast… "Hey, I thought you said this was the off season for tourists up here?"

Sam shrugged, looking at the crowd of at least thirty people crowding the breakfast buffet. Sure, it was a hell of a lot less then the giant hotel could hold, but it was an awful lot for a stormy weekend in the off season. "I thought it was… uh, Dean, is it me or are these people, uh…" he trailed off, glancing at his brother in concern.

The spacious room, with its white clothed tables and a wall of windows showing a panoramic view of the surrounding mountains, was filled with what appeared to be a tour group of some sort. The guests were wearing name tags and chattering animatedly to each other from table to table. They ranged in age from groups of college students in beat up hoodies and jeans to older folks wearing everything from hippie layers to tweed professor-style suits. "What the hell? There a geek convention in town?"

Much to Sam's relief, none of the guests appeared to hear them. Nudging Dean's shoulder, he headed towards the food. "Let's just eat and get out of here."

They proceeded towards the line, grabbing plates and loading up with food. Even Sam felt hungry enough to take an embarrassing amount of food, especially considering this was a far nicer breakfast, or hell, a better meal than any they'd ever had. The restaurant in the hotel was obviously a gourmet one, and the buffet was manned by chefs every few feet preparing fresh entrees. Smiling widely, Dean managed to forget the peculiar crowd at his back.

Sam had already proceeded to an empty table in a semi-secluded corner, and was about to start on his eggs when his cell phone rang. Glad no one was close enough to be offended by it, he flipped it open in embarrassment.

"Hello?"

_Sam, honey, you two need to get out of there!_

Dean looked on in concern as Sam's face froze. "Missouri? Why? Are we in danger?"

Dean forgot his food as quickly as he'd forgotten his earlier worries, which came rushing back. He leaned towards Sam, who angled the phone and raised the volume slightly so they both could hear her.

Missouri sounded embarrassed. _No—not like that, boys. But you need to leave now, you'll be real sorry if you don't. I'm sorry, Sam, I never would have told him… his girl Beth overheard me talking to—to someone else about you boys. She and her mama were visiting me just two months ago. Chris just emailed me askin' for help… if he'd called I'd have known what he was planning… can't read a computer's mind, honey… Didn't know 'till I called him just now to see that you boys got in okay…_

_WHY are you boys still sitting there?_

Startled, and then annoyed, Dean stood up, pulling Sam from his chair. He was right about Sam's vibes… he couldn't believe he got suckered in by a fancy breakfast spread. He turned around to bump straight into Walker, who'd been heading towards his table. He heard Sam snap the phone shut on top of Missouri's warnings behind him. Oh, they'd be hearing about that later…

"Ah, Dean, Sam, wonderful! We were just about to get started." Walker turned towards the crowd, who quieted quickly, looking over at the giant man in anticipation. Dean felt Sam shrink back when the eyes of the crowd turned to them… he'd been shrinking away from people a lot lately.

Walker was totally going on his shit list.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you all for making the trip up here to take part in our exciting weekend at the Haunted Inn! I'd like to introduce you to our guest experts, Dean Winchester, ghost hunter, and his brother Sam, his psychic medium!"

Correction: Dean was going to get that dagger out of his trunk _now._


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I have not made a major media purchase since my last post, so it can be assumed that I still don't own _Supernatural._

AN: Just to clarify, because on proofreading I realized the many ways this chapter could be read, the relationship between the brothers is just brotherly. No Wincest will be appearing here, only because that's not where this story happens to be going. They are close, perhaps overly so, because this is how I read a relationship, their only stable primary relationship, developed under intense, life threatening conditions.

"_The truth is rarely pure and never simple."_

_Oscar Wilde_

_The Importance of Being Earnest_

**Chapter Four**

He must have seen Dean's fists clench—hell, seen his whole body clench, muscles quick to respond, so ready to fight—because Sam's hand found his shoulder. He didn't push or grab. He simply laid his hand over Dean's shoulder and restrained him. The older brother was furious and he knew Sam should be freaked out by what was happening and how'd he'd just been labeled, but the hand on his shoulder told him that Sam was calm. Unbidden through his mind, the unwritten Winchester rule flashed: _One and only one Winchester may freak out at any one time. Whoever gets there first has the floor._ Sam's hand was steady on his shoulder—Dean was _murderous_ so Sam was calm, simple as that. As easily as breathing he had moved his arm and saved Walker's life.

For the moment, anyway.

Sam's thoughts spun as he tried to figure a way out of this mess. There were a thousand ways this could bite them in the ass more than it already had. First and foremost in his mind was the chilling knowledge that Dean was a fugitive—a dead fugitive but still—and it would only take one curious tourist to at worst send him to prison for life and at best reopen a multi-state manhunt that would destroy what was left of his brother's life. Sam's eyes flicked around the room, taking in the security cameras in the dining room and most likely in the lobby as well. Looking over Dean's shoulder, he met Walker's eyes… the taller man flicked his eyes towards his older brother before looking back at Sam, smirking. He knew—he had them by the balls.

Half of Sam's mind desperately wanted to freak out, and was being restrained by the barest of margins. _His psychic medium? Christ on a bike!_

Sam could see Dean pulling back into himself, glancing at the crowd. He pressed briefly on the shoulder beneath his hand. Keep your mouth shut, Dean. Sam knew his brother's first instinct here would be to lie… and given their lives and experiences he wouldn't really be wrong. But Sam hadn't slept through his years in pre-law—the crowd already knew half the truth, and they couldn't yet be sure exactly how far Walker was willing to go, and how much he had communicated to his guests. There was only one way to take the situation back—only one safe route to go.

And it would only work if Dean kept his mouth shut.

Trust me, Sam's hand said, and Dean was quiet… wary, tense, and still standing firmly between Sam and Walker, but he was quiet.

Putting on his best smile, his poor-orphaned-but-really-a-sweet-honest-boy smile (which worked so much better for him than for Dean because he never used it to get laid, well, except for that one time)—Sam broke the first and sovereign rule of the Winchester family (unless of course you were some girl from Ohio and Dean was still trying to get laid).

He told the truth—the whole, mostly unedited, ever so much stranger than fiction—truth. He unconsciously slipped into his 'lawyer voice,' laying out the story of their lives, starting with their mother's murder and their dark childhood, through Jess's death, where his breath hitched and he'd had to pause for a moment, through everything they'd been through since. The shapeshifter he left out, but not the asylum, or Dean's near death—he pointedly ignored Dean's hissed 'what the hell!'—and stopped short of including Max. Missouri didn't know that, so Walker couldn't know it, either. The only reason he'd included the faith healer bit was to drum up sympathy from the audience. He hoped he told them enough so that they wouldn't go looking for the truth, and enough so that if they did, they'd be too sympathetic to turn Dean in.

Because Sam _had_ paid attention in school… he'd learned that a single person can be hard to convince of anything, a person alone is naturally wary and somewhat distrusting. People in groups, say, twelve on a jury or thirty eating breakfast, are much easier to convince of anything. The larger the group the more easily convinced they generally are; they feel safe, and they begin to identify with whatever they're being told, and here there was no prosecution, only defense… Sam's defense. Sam's earnest storytelling, Sam's obvious pain, _there's been so much and we can't take much more and we risk it all for your safety and you wouldn't take him from me, would you?_

Sam never said it, but everyone in the room heard it… the crowd, moved; Walker, speculative; Dean, quietly shocked.

_I can't be alone, _Sam's calm retelling said. _Don't take him from me. I wouldn't survive it. _

_And neither would you._

As Sam's voice died, Walker jumped in, obviously trying to regain control of the situation. "Well, that was exciting, wasn't it? Make a fine movie someday. Well, guess we should let these poor boys eat, and then we can start on the hunt! Enjoy, folks!"

There was a moment of applause… one older woman blew her nose loudly, and Sam stepped back, falling into his chair. He felt exhausted, like he'd run ten miles, as though all his energy had been poured into the crowd in front of him. He wasn't so sure it hadn't.

Dean waited until Walker retreated before sitting back down at the table, tuning out the excited chatter of the crowd behind them. He stared at Sam, an inscrutable expression on his face. Sam pushed the cold eggs around on his plate, ignoring his brother's unwavering gaze. Dean knew they hadn't had a lot of options, there, but…but Jesus! If he wanted everyone to see his skeletons he wouldn't keep them in the god damned closet!

At the same time, the crisis seemed to have passed. No one appeared to suspect anything, because, damn, had Sammy sold that story! They just had to ride this out, and leave as soon as it was done. They couldn't afford to raise suspicions; he'd seen Walker smirk at him, and knew they'd be picked up by the cops before they even got off the mountain. Still, there had to be a way to make sure Sam thought twice before trying the honesty defense again. Hmmm…

"You know, Sam, that whole lawyer thing you did there, that," he paused, lowering his voice for emphasis, "that was really sexy. You could totally get laid that way. I bet any girl in the room would take you under the table right now."

Sam sputtered around a cup of coffee, all moodiness forgotten. "_Christ_, Dean! There's something severely wrong with you. Just, really, really wrong with you."

Dean merely smirked, sipping his coffee calmly. Mission accomplished.

After finishing their food, both of them cleaning their plates for a change, they looked out over the assembled amateur ghost hunters. Sighing, Dean shoved back from the table. "So, how're we gonna work this?"

Sam shrugged, looking uncertain. "Well, we can't carry any visible weapons. This may be shocking for you, but many people find a sawed-off shotgun somewhat off-putting. Besides, we can't let anyone get hurt."

"They're the idiots who signed up for this freak weekend. You get what you pay for, I say." Off Sam's look, he sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I get ya, morality boy. Like you didn't just milk every last one of them for their pity," he held up his hand to stall Sam's protest. "Well, why don't we, uh… talk about looking into the history of this place, you know, the importance of research and all that? Safe enough, right… then we can, uh, walk through the place with the EMF. With a place this big, should take most of the day."

Sam gave the little half smile that seemed to be all he could manage lately. "Sounds good to me."

As they stood, Dean put a restraining hand on Sam's arm. "Dude, let me do the talking this time. God knows what'll come out of your mouth anymore." Seeing the mirth in his brother's eyes, Sam acquiesced wordlessly, leaning against the table and watching the crowd over Dean's shoulder.

Dean braced himself slightly, turning the Winchester charm up as high as it would go. "So—uh, if you're all finished, then we can get started. The first thing you do on any ghost hunt is thoroughly research the site. Now this inn was built in," he hesitated, casting back to what he and Sam had gathered, but didn't have a chance to finish.

"1894. It was a mansion, a wedding present for a mine owner's wife. John and Laura Bennet." The speaker was a college age guy up front.

Dean sensed Sam shift behind him. "Yeah, that's right," he replied, arching a brow. "Laura was very interested in—"

"The paranormal. She held séances in the third floor library almost once a month. Some say she herself was psychic." This time the interrupter was a plump older woman wearing a silk shawl seated in the back. Sam shifted again behind him, and Dean realized he was laughing, silently.

"Yes, that's right. They were both killed when the miners rioted in 1910. They were—"

"Hacked to death in their beds with mining picks. Several miners that were known to be in the house disappeared during the attack. Most believe they fled to avoid prosecution, but others believe they disappeared in the house. After that, the building was closed down for over ninety years, until being renovated and reopened by the Walker family, the last living descendents of the Bennets."

The last know-it-all was on the far side of the room, a British sounding guy in a sports jacket. Frowning, Dean looked around the room. "Has everyone done this research already?"

The woman in the shawl spoke back up. "Oh, no, honey. This was all in those pamphlets in the lobby." She waved a folded piece of paper over her head to prove her point.

Dean sighed, rubbing his forehead and looking down to avoid actually committing the crime he was wanted for. "Hell. This is hell."

Behind him, Sam's laughter was no longer silent.

Five hours later, Dean's day hadn't gotten much better. He was leading the group down the third floor hallway, holding his EMF in front of him and moving towards the library. It seemed like a good place to stop before lunch. Sam was trailing the group, swinging the camcorder back and forth along the dark paneled hall. Bright sunlight poured in through floor to ceiling windows at each end of the hallway. So far, they hadn't had much more than a few minor spikes on the meter, nothing to really write home about. To their credit, the crowd was patient, not getting antsy or overly noisy even though nothing had happened for hours. He was starting to give them nicknames in his head, to keep them straight… silk shawl, British dude and his tweedy friends, college brats A through G, hot older chicks A, B, and C, plaid shirt, plaid shirt with a lisp, ugly boots… it was a way to pass the time, anyway.

Dean had even gotten some real amusement out of them when one woman asked Sam if he was sensing anything in the Bennet's former bedroom. Sam's clipped 'no' was probably the rudest thing he'd ever said to an old lady. Dean had filed it away, under: 'Bring up later, relentlessly.'

But what he really wanted was a chance to get this done and get the hell out of here, to at least be able to work without a studio audience. As he looked back at his trail of eager little ghost hunting ducklings, he figured that probably wasn't going to happen. Pushing open the door to the library, he moved in, watching his meter carefully.

Like many rooms in the inn, the library had a wall of windows on its far side, these draped in plush velvet, and three walls full of books. It opened into the floor above, creating a vaulted, two story space with a small balcony running along the upper shelves. Set up in front of the fireplace was a large round table, covered in a crimson cloth. Theatrically displayed on it were a crystal ball, several half burnt white candles, and a deck of tarot cards. Dean rolled his eyes as the guests ohhed and ahhed over the table, as though it were some major clue that would crack the case.

Knowing without having to look that the presence at his left shoulder was Sam, Dean muttered, "I think this might just be the worst thing that's ever happened to us."

Snapping the camcorder off and tucking it in his pocket, Sam gave his quiet, _dude, seriously,_ laugh. "I think that's stretching it a little bit, Dean."

Silk shawl, who had been fluttering excitedly around the table, suddenly gave a squeal. "Oh, tonight we should have a séance! Perhaps we can ask the spirits why they're lingering, and help them move on!"

Excited chatter met her idea, and Dean bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, or screaming. "Still think I'm 'stretching it' Sammy? Who do you think they're gonna want to lead their little séance, oh brother dear, my psychic medium?"

Sam took the high road and ignored both silk shawl and his brother, choosing to ask instead, "You figure we'll send them down to lunch after this?"

Dean nodded, watching the guests as they examined the bookshelves with interest. "Yeah… then maybe we can get some real work done."

"You know we can't burn this place down, right?"

Rolling his eyes at Sam's holier-than-thou tone, Dean gritted his teeth. "Yeah, whatever, but you know I'm kicking Walker's ass at some point."

There was no reply for a long moment, and he turned slightly to look at Sam. "Sam?"

His younger brother's eyes were dark, and Dean was reminded, suddenly, of the blade he'd seen that morning. Sam's voice was as dark as his eyes when he replied.

"Just don't kill him."

Dean's reply was cut short by the screech of his EMF. His attention pulled away from his brother, he lifted the device, trying to ascertain where the reading was coming from. The guests all jumped and began to gather around them, blocking Dean's readings and pushing the brothers together in their haste to see the meter. Sam's hand braced against his back, and a strange familiar feeling washed over Dean, one he hadn't quite analyzed yet, a feeling like Sam was suddenly far away, pulled away, somehow. A cold, chilling sense of a terrible space between them…

_Oh, no, not now… not here!_

Sure enough, Sam stiffened with a gasp, swaying on his feet. He had both hands pressed into his face, and was slowly sinking towards the floor under the weight of his agony. Several hands reached out to grab, to help, to pull him back up, and Sam cried out in pain as they touched him. Dean's shock lasted for half a second as his brain processed the information available. Sammy's in pain… people are touching him… Sam hurts more.

"Get OFF HIM!" His voice sounded strange even to his own ears, and he grabbed the nearest person and shoved them off Sam, as if to illustrate his point. Silk shawl all but flew backwards into the arms of plaid with a lisp, and she couldn't have looked more shocked if she'd been mauled by a kitten. Everyone stepped back from Sam, sensing, finally, that they'd been walking with predators all day, and there was officially blood in the water.

Dean kneeled in front of Sam, torn between the absolute need to reach out when he was needed, and the fear that he could somehow hurt him as the onlookers had. Reality seemed to tumble forward around him, rolling out of control down some deadly hill, and Dean decided to listen to his instincts. He had to be able to help… he couldn't be useless, helpless.

Sam whimpered, softly, cringing against the stabbing pain, and Dean placed his hands on his head, his fingers tangled in dark locks, and he whispered softly to his brother, like he had so often when he'd been sick. Sam cried out, again, and something in Dean broke, a little.

It woke up, deep in him, judged Sam's pain, and found it unacceptable.

And suddenly Sam was far but close, too, and the look of pain flowed off his face as his eyes shut into the vision. _Holy shit!_ Dean breathed to himself, not releasing his hold on his brother. _I helped! I—I—what the hell did I do?_

Vaguely aware of his brother's hands, Sam felt relief rise up under him, strong and relentless and as familiar as the smell of earth after rain, and with a sigh he fell, painlessly for once, into the vision.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Ahh... If I owned Supernatural... well, Meg sure as heck would be dead, for one thing.

"_Sibling relationships- and 80 percent of Americans have at least one- outlast marriages, survive the death of parents, resurface after quarrels that would sink any friendship. They flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty, and distrust."_

_Erica E. Goode_

"_The Secret World of Siblings"_

_US News and World Report, 10 January 1994_

**Chapter Five**

There was a _bizarre_ smell in the air and it was the first thing to register in Sam's consciousness. The _earthsafesolidhome_ smell was not gone, and damned if someone somewhere was not humming 'Highway to Hell,' but there was a freaky weird smell that Sam knew he recognized rising up through the deep blue distance of his mind. It was stringent and sour, and oh, nasty…

"That's alright, Tommy, just let it all out… Claire, call down to Maintenance and let'em know we need a mop down here. Here, just hold onto the bucket, Tommy, your mother's coming to pick you up, hun."

Sight came hard on the tail of the sudden, startling voices, harsh white industrial light that went just so well with the smell of elementary school lunch the second time around, and Sam recognized where he was. The faded, pink and white vinyl floor squeaked with a line of tiny sneakers, and leaning in various poses of listlessness or hyperactivity was a class of second graders.

Sam was standing in the nurse's office of John F. Kennedy Elementary, of Charity, Wyoming. It was May of 1991; Sam had just turned eight.

It was scoliosis screening day. Which normally-there's that word again- wouldn't have been such a big deal, except that a poltergeist had taken a liking to Sam just last night, and had shown its affection by tossing him down two flights of stairs. Dean had been angry and upset that he hadn't been there-he'd been in the basement folding laundry- but Sam had tried to tell him that he'd saved his life; he just hadn't gotten the chance to say it.

Dad had begun teaching him hunting things recently, and Sam recalled that he hadn't been very good, not a natural like Dean, who learned standing just so, and punching like this and never like that, just so easily, like breathing and eating and sleeping. Dad was frustrated with Sam, who was eager then, but so, so clumsy, and he gave gruff, strict lessons, scared senseless that his youngest son would be defenseless when his day came… and John knew it would come.

So Dean took up teaching Sam, too, teaching not offence but defense, teaching him to stand correctly with part of an old 'Twister' game, teaching him to go limp and loose when falling by rolling down the grassy hill out back on giddy bright afternoons. Dad thought that Sammy had to learn to kill, to kill or be killed, and Sam couldn't understand. Dean knew Sam needed only to survive. For now, that was enough. Dean could kill.

Sam needed only to survive, and Dean would come. Protection, Sam understood.

That's exactly what Sam had done. He'd gotten up from his bed, with a _bad-strange-not-alone-where'sDean_ feeling, and had been about to go down the stairs to find him when, between one heartbeat and the next, he'd been flying. His only thought had been 'loose, limp ball, little brother… don't brace yourself!' and then he'd hit, halfway down the first flight, partially on his side and back, and had sort of tumbled down to the landing. He probably would have been stopped by the turn in the stairs, but another shove that had nothing to do with gravity renewed the awful upside down momentum, and three horrible bounces later he lay stunned on the living room carpet, breath, sense, and spirit slapped completely out of him.

The door to the basement flew open before Sam could register much more than pain from oh, gosh, everywhere—and Dean was there, between him and the poltergeist, with the bucket of rock salt from the basement stairs. The entire bucket flew much as Sam had moments before, and between inhale and exhale, the poltergeist was annihilated.

There was a still, small moment where the rain-patter of rock salt sliding back down the wooden stairs and slightly hysterical breathing filled the tiny, looming house. Then Sam was surrounded by Dean, pulled up into wiry eleven-year-old arms, and it had hurt horrifically in the best possible way. They had sat in the puddle of rock salt for a long time that night, Sam wrapped in his brother, too stunned even to cry, while Dean whispered shattered, stuttered apologies into his baby hair.

Neither thought to call their father back from the lead he was pursuing in Omaha for the week.

Poltergeists happened, sometimes. So you sat on the floor for as long as you had to, and you dealt.

Sam had been bruised in places his eight-year-old knowledge of anatomy had never imagined existed, and had a slightly sprained wrist, but had been extremely lucky. If you're well prepared, Dad always said, you'll never need to be lucky. Sam had been both. He'd had Dean.

It wasn't until the next day that the Winchester collective of luck and preparation ran out.

Sam was brought back into the moment of his vision by a highly unprofessional shriek. He looked over to where his younger self--and wasn't that the strangest thing he'd ever, no… wait, it wasn't—had just been stripped of the shirt he had heretofore refused to take off.

Sam would be first person to say that he and Dean had never been abused, or even neglected, in any major, legal way. The things that they'd lacked weren't overly different from the wants of other single parent families living below the poverty level. It was usually the additional things they had to deal with where their family got kind of dicey. Right at that moment, though, Sam had looked like the lead actor of an after school special, assuming that the special had the best effects makeup _ever_.

Sam remembered, suddenly, why he hated Wyoming. It hadn't really been their fault, hell, you could even say that they'd done the right thing. Sam would never see it that way.

He'd been trapped in that foster home for two weeks, and it was a nice, normal house with nice normal people. It's a wonder that experience hadn't put him off 'normal' for life. Fourteen days… and he hadn't spoken a word. But he'd cried… cried himself sick, even after the other boys called him sissy, and then he'd retreated. It had been all he had left. He'd been silent for two more weeks after.

Dean had spent the two weeks in Juvenile Detention for breaking both arms (six bones, all told) of the officer who'd later tried to separate them.

No. No, no, no. Sam backed away from the scene in front of him, the angry nurse and concerned doctor and the wide eyes of his classmates not at all deterred by the hastily erected privacy screen. He wasn't sure how far this was supposed to go, or why he was here, but he wasn't living it again. The memory of Dean being dragged down the hall away from him by the cops, screaming and fighting, the horrible unending fear of never seeing him or even Dad again, he'd never, ever been apart from Dean before, and he'd _shrieked_ after Dean down that hall in a way that, remembering the cries, wrenched, wretched and hollow, still brought his heart into his throat… no.

They never spoke of it, after. Some things were more and worse and deeper. It was a memory so cold and dark that it had sunk like a sinister stone into the murky, nearly bottomless well of Winchester trauma.

Sam was determined that it would _stay there._

The vision spun around him in a queasy anguished whirl, and the only solid thing was the relentless strength holding him up and… seriously, he didn't even know you could hum 'Leper Messiah' in such a soothing way.

The room darkened and settled around him, and…

_What in the blue hell?_

He was back at the Inn, but it was night… not that Sam had any idea how long he'd been under, at this point. Starlight stole through the lacy curtains of the Walker's bedroom, slipping soundless across the shine of well worn, loved antiques. Curled into the window seat was Laura Bennet, dressed in a soft, chocolate colored dress, the same bruise dark shade of her hair and eyes. She leaned into the jamb of the oversized window, her tiny form dwarfed by glass and shadow and silvered light.

"Pain is the price of power, Sam," her voice wandered, small and drifting, across the wide room to him.

He opened his mouth to reply, question, but his voice hadn't traveled with him. He was here to listen.

Laura wrapped her arms around herself, looking too old to look so young, and watched the night with sad eyes. "They ask so much more of us, their bright daughters and sons, than the darkness does of its children. They ask the entire measure of ourselves, more that we can conceive we are, and then wonder how much further we'll go. How much we can believe without seeing. How much we can see without sliding beneath the surface."

She pulled her knees to her chest, laying her head on her arms. "They came… asked me how much I was willing to give… what I was willing to lay on the altar. It's always that one more precious thing than you can stand to lose. You and your brother have paid in innocence and pain and blood. Tempered with pain and fire… to be blade and armor. Maybe you've paid enough, I don't know."

Whisper and reflection gave way to crisp clarity. "Point Peter is a between place. This house is founded on that rock… here things can be loosed or bound, affirmed or denied."

Faster than dreaming she was before him, so tiny before his height and it struck Sam suddenly when she laid a cold, pale hand on his face, that she'd been in his position, here, years ago, fighting the dark things, this tiny, plain, pale girl woman with eyes like bruises. "Power is pain, Sam. You can't see what you need to if you allow him to shield your eyes."

The world twisted around him again, and Sam, desperate to get out, reached with everything he knew for that new yet familiar one-solid-thing…

He couldn't tell if the hands were holding him up or holding him down.

His knees ached and his back ached and someone was holding him… desperate fingers wound in his hair, and Sam braced for the blinding migraine that was surely about to descend…

When it didn't.

He cracked one eye open tentatively, feeling about five years old. No pain accompanied the afternoon sunlight the flooded the library, and he opened his other eye.

It was Dean. Dean bracing him… humming AC/DC… Dean was the safe-solid-earth-smell. Sam was surprised, and then surprised at his own surprise. He knew this… he was simply finding again what four years had allowed him to forget, to displace with liberal arts requirements and contract law. It was like opening a dusty, cluttered box at the back of a closet and finding his entire childhood inside it, a Dean-shaped place he'd left empty and open and ignored the chill. He'd always known that he had to go… staying would have broken him. He hadn't known why he had to leave, back then, only that he couldn't stay and survive… and surviving was his first lesson, always. Now he knew why he'd had to leave… he never would have seen this, if…

He had to leave to come back.

"Sam? You in there, man?"

He managed to make his eyes focus, and he saw Dean's concerned face and the empty room around them. "Dean? Where is everybody? How long was I under?"

"A fucking long time! Are you okay? Where the hell were you?" There was the expected not very well concealed concern in Dean's voice, and something else, a razor edge of freaked out and not admitting it.

"Uh… Dean, you can let go of my face now."

Dean dropped his face in a way that was so _Dean_ and so _ugh, geez, man_ that Sam laughed out loud before he could stop himself. He fell into a seated position, leaning his arms on his knees and shaking his head at his older brother. Sam let his brother look him over for as long as he needed to, knowing that his standards of okay and Dean's standards for him being okay were light years apart and always would be.

Dean cocked his head to the side finally, sitting back against the side of a suede armchair. "I'll take that laughter to mean you're okay and I shouldn't be expecting you to start bleeding from every orifice anytime soon. Do you need some aspirin?"

Shaking his head, Sam looked at his brother critically. "No, I don't have a headache. What did you do? You—you were there… with me?"

Dean's eyes shifted away and back, so quickly Sam would have thought it was just a trick of the light, except for that thin blade of freaked out that sharpened in his face. "What do you mean I was there, Dorothy? I'm not dying again, am I?"

"No, Dean, and Jesus, could you _be_ any less funny? No… I felt you, in the vision, you were there, it was a—a safe feeling. It's hard to explain."

Dean's eyes flicked again and this time Sam was sure he'd seen it. "It must be, 'cause you're doing a piss poor job of explaining it. And could you _be_ any more touchy feely?"

Sam would have been more exasperated if he didn't know that Dean couldn't express his relief in any other way, ever since they'd outgrown sitting huddled in pools of rock salt. He decided they should keep moving. "I saw Laura Bennet… she told me things… there's something about this house, the mountain. She called it a 'between place'—that it was a place where things could be bound or loosed… affirmed or denied. And—and she said things… about us, about being… tempered by pain, to be armor and shield. She said that—that pain was power—that—you were shielding me from seeing and…" Sam drifted for a moment, staring at his brother. "You—you stopped—what did you…I didn't have a vision!"

"Then what the hell were you just talking about?" Dean had a sudden feeling that he wasn't going to like where this was going.

"No… I saw her—but… I mean, there was the whole scoliosis thing—the nurse's office—and then Laura—but it wasn't—there was something—" Sam was running his hand through his hair, frustrated.

Dean arched a brow coolly, letting Sam freak out if he needed to because it was his turn, anyway. "Anytime you wanna string a sentence together, there, Sam."

Sam scowled at him, knowing he looked petulant and not really caring. "That's what she said. Pain is power… I can't have the vision if I don't feel the pain. When you did what ever you did, you held me away from the pain _and_ the vision."

Now Dean was scowling, and not looking petulant about it at all, which was really kind of annoying. "Wow, Sam. With conclusions like that, you could jump for the Olympics. And I'll say again, if you didn't have a vision, then _what the hell are we talking about?_"

"I had a vision, but not of the future! Not the one I was supposed to have! That's what she meant, I know it. If you stop the pain, you stop that vision." Sam wasn't quite sure why he was pissed, but he had no problem expressing it.

"Good." Dean wasn't a slacker when it came to anger management, either.

Sam sputtered. "Good? How is that good? What if—if—we need a warning about something? How will we know what—dammit, Dean, what the hell do you mean, good?"

"I meant it exactly the way I said it, Stanford. Dictionary, much? Good. Adjective. No more killer migraines, _good_. No more being a magnet for evil, _good_. See also: Sleeping through the night for a change and me finally being able to fucking help you!" Dean had a strange, almost fierce look on his face, but his words were measured and low.

"What if we miss something? Something we need to know? A warning, or if someone needs our help?" Sam was desperate, willing Dean to listen, please listen.

"We were doing fine before. We'll be fine again. I found a way to help you and I'm not going to apologize for doing it. I'm not about to watch you writhe in pain just for some supernatural broadband we _don't even need_." Dean's quiet voice held some of the horror he felt when sitting helpless beside Sam's agony. Nothing was worth it.

Sam's eyes were hard. "And I'm not about to watch you burn on a ceiling just because I can't handle a headache."

Dean was on his feet before Sam could even register his reaction. He stalked over to the small, oak card catalogue in the corner, yanking a drawer out with more force than was strictly necessary. Sam watched him flip through the cards faster than he could read them, and sympathy washed against anger within him. Standing, he went to join his brother at the table, ignoring the way Dean's shoulders stiffened as he approached. Pulling out another drawer, he sat heavily on the table's only chair.

Dean's voice was almost normal when he spoke. "I figure this library should have some good local history in it… maybe even some of Laura's personal books and records."

It was a sort-of olive branch, and Sam took it gratefully. "Good thinking. How long until the tourists come back?" Sam extended a branch of his own, knowing nothing had been resolved.

Just like that, Dean was back, all flashing grins and leather. "Man, you should have seen me toss silk shawl out of the way… She got some real altitude!"

"Oh, Dean, please tell me you didn't assault the tourists."


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Supernatural,_ or anything else, for that matter.

**Warnings:** Language.

**Notes:** Thanks to Kohadril, who was kind enough to beta for me, and who graciously laughed at all my jokes. You can't ask for more than that.

"'_Good and evil are God's prejudices,' said the serpent."_

_Friedrich Nietzsche_

**Chapter Six**

The brothers headed back to their room just before dinner. Their research was moving slowly, and Sam wanted a shower after the cold sweat brought on by his vision.

Sam stood beneath the scalding water, letting it beat down on his aching body. His back felt ridiculously sore, probably from all the tension of the day. He'd always been prone to physically manifesting his stress, so back and shoulder pain was nothing new. Dean half-joked it was from slouching all the time, trying to pass as a normal sized human being instead of a small tree.

"Dude! I already missed lunch for your freak ass, I'm not missing dinner! Finish whacking off and get the hell out here!"

Speak of the devil. "God, Dean, go on ahead if you're that hungry!"

As usual, what they said to each other and what they did were as distinct as midnight and noon. Sam immediately stepped out of the shower and hurried to towel off, knowing all the while that Dean wouldn't go down without him, no matter what he'd said. Dean banged on the door again, no doubt releasing some of the tension from their latest unresolved fight.

Sam rolled his eyes, reaching down too fast to snatch his clean t-shirt off the floor. He gasped as the skin on his back violently protested the movement. Fingers tangled absently in the faded green cotton, he straightened cautiously. His entire body was beginning to feel as though he'd pissed Dean off and then sparred with him. _That_ was a mistake he'd only made once. Using the t-shirt to wipe the steam off the mirror, he turned and looked over his shoulder at his back.

He was black, blue, green, and red from top to bottom. The bruises seemed to darken as he watched. His eyes flicked back and forth across the reflection, and he tried to remember if he'd hit the floor at some point during his vision earlier. There was a deep red-violet line across his shoulder blades, and another six or so inches below it.

Sam had an unwelcome moment of deja-vu, and twisted his left wrist slowly, hoping to prove himself wrong. A sharp pain shot up to his elbow, and his stomach sank, icy dread washing against the heat of bruised skin. Of course he'd recognized the bruise pattern… it was the only one he'd ever had that was photographed as state's evidence. Even if he could have forgotten, he'd seen them on his eight year old self just that afternoon.

And, somehow, they'd followed him back.

"Sam, come on! _Are_ you whacking off in there?"

Sam turned swiftly from the mirror, pulling the damp shirt over his head with a hiss, his wrist and back protesting the hurried movements. His sweatshirt immediately followed despite the heat lingering from the shower. He buckled his belt with his good hand while opening the door gingerly with the other. Dean was leaning against the wall impatiently, arms crossed over his chest and eyebrow arched, _so what went on in there, little brother?_

"Let me just get my shoes and we'll go." Sam ignored the smirk, slouching down on the bed and grabbing his socks, thinking _casual, casual, casual, I'm fine, don't notice me._

"Are you okay, Sammy?"

_Crap. Crap crap crap._

Choosing to shove his feet into his sneakers rather than get caught instantly trying to tie them one handed, Sam shook his wet bangs into his eyes, hiding behind the youthful earnestness of needing a haircut. He wasn't sure when he'd decided to hide this from his brother; he was just certain that he couldn't handle another one of Dean's worried stares.

"This isn't another hash brown moment, is it?" He asked, imitating his brother's sarcastic nonchalance. Another law school trick: always know your opponents tactics better than your own.

Dean ran his eyes over his brother, feeling something was off but knowing that there simply hadn't been time for something to happen. He sighed, finally, letting himself be fooled. "Man, you need a haircut."

Sam rolled his eyes again as they checked their weapons and headed out the door. "I'll put it on the list… somewhere between _exorcise mansion_ and _short-sheet Dean's bed._ How's that?"

Dean glanced at him disappointedly and Sam was struck by the resemblance to their father. He'd never noticed it before. "Short-sheet my bed? Seriously? I'd kick your ass for that but it's mean to hit a twelve-year-old girl who learned all her best pranks at a slumber party."

"I can't believe I'm taking crap from a guy who made two masturbation jokes in a span of ten minutes."

"Ooh, maybe later we can have a pillow fight and paint each other's nails, _Samantha."_

"I'd pay a lot of money to see that." A third voice entered the conversation.

Both brothers looked up to see several female guests coming down the stairs towards them. Sam immediately flushed straight to his ears at having something so private as teasing overheard. The tourists could never understand was really being said between the insults, but it still felt like an invasion.

Dean, however, smiled gamely at the women. He opened his mouth to reply and Sam could see—just see—Dean's very lewdest gears turning, so he pinched his brother's arm and spoke through his blush.

"Let's _go,_ Dean. I thought you were starving."

Dean managed give the women his _later_ smile before Sam dragged him down the stairs. "Yeah, I am starving, Sam. _Starving._"

The guests seemed to have their learned their lesson from this afternoon, keeping a fairly respectable distance behind the brothers as they approached the dining room. Sam looked over at his brother, knowing Dean wasn't just talking about hooking up with some random women. When you only talked to one person for days on end, you tended to overcompensate when with others. Dean's flirting was as much about making sure he still existed beyond Sam, Dad, and hunting, as it was getting laid. Flirting was Dean's normal, his one thing that had nothing to do with them and their lives.

Sam was suddenly contrite. "Sorry, man."

Dean paused as they reached the dinner buffet, studying Sam for a moment. "You think too much," he said at length, grabbing a plate and dismissing Sam's guilt in a single casual movement. "If I really wanted to get laid, I could. Easy. Dean Winchester, _Ghost Hunter._ How often do we get to use that line?"

Sam coughed in a way that sounded suspiciously like 'cocktail waitress, Tulsa, November of '99,' as he grabbed his own plate and followed Dean down the line.

"I'm not even going to ask how you remembered that, freak boy."

After they'd eaten, and shot down the repeated suggestion of a séance, much to silk shawl's disappointment, they decided to return to the third floor, to revisit the Bennets' bedroom and the library. Both Dean and Sam were at a loss as to what to do with the guests for the night. They didn't want to expose them to too much, and they couldn't get to the bottom of this with out buckling down for a while. As long as they had the guests with them, they were restricted to weapons they could easily conceal, which meant only blades and small caliber guns. As a compromise, they figured they'd walk the mansion for about three hours, until ten, and then send the tourists to bed. After that they could get some work done.

From their earlier reading they'd found out that Laura had indeed been heavily involved in the occult. That had been part of the reason for the miner's riot—they'd believed she was a witch and was responsible for the numerous deaths and cave-ins in the nearby mines. They'd also found out that she'd been six months pregnant at the time of her death. Her words had come back to Sam, then. Dean gave him a sharp, worried glance as he whispered them aloud.

"_It's always that one more precious thing than you can stand to lose."_

Wrapped in white silk and an ivory ribbon on the shelf next to the journal had been a set of tarot cards. Sam had refused to touch them after Dean had unwrapped them, earning him another concerned look and the offer to rest and clean up before dinner. They had left their argument simmering in the background, in true Winchester fashion, agreeing to violently disagree for the moment.

They resumed their pattern from the afternoon, with Dean leading the group with the EMF, and Sam trailing with the camcorder. It was turned to night-vision mode, and Dean had, mercifully, foregone his traditional Paris Hilton joke. Walker had joined the group in spite of the extremely cold reception he'd received from Dean upon the suggestion. Sam had to keep reminding himself to watch the monitor and not just stare suspiciously at Walker's back. The man's large form was also blocking his view of Dean, which was agitating him. From the way Dean was moving uncharacteristically back and forth across the hallway, the blocked line of sight was annoying him as well.

"Witch! Whore of the Devil!"

Sam jerked around, looking for the source of rough, scarred voice. Glancing down the hall, he cursed Walker under his breath. He couldn't see whether Dean had reacted to that. The crowd kept moving uninterrupted, so maybe it had just been him. He noted the time and location and kept walking, trying not to tense his bruised shoulders.

"Burn in hell, witch!"

The painful, grit choked voice was directly over his shoulder, and Sam swung around, going for his blade with his good hand. His hand closed around the hilt at the same second he registered the still empty hallway. Not even an orb appeared on the camcorder screen. The crowd continued, only the very last few guests even noticing his sudden movement. The EMF was silent, as far as he could tell from this distance.

Sam wished he could make eye contact with Dean.

"Do not suffer a witch to live!"

Suddenly, Sam could feel eyes on him, watching from all sides. The weight of their cruel malice danced light and icy across his skin.

He refused to shudder.

Reaching his hand again towards his blade, he brushed over his cell phone. His cell… _of course_. He flicked it open, typing in a single word and hitting send.

At the front of the line, Dean was trying to see how many ways he could come up with to kill Walker using only the tools he was carrying on him. There were a lot more than fifty ways. _A lot._ Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was almost ten. Thank God.

He took an extra step and a half to left, ignoring the memory of his father's voice saying he was wasting energy over-traveling the hall like that. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, but could only just make out Sam's head above the crowd.

The thought of his brother was followed immediately by the vibration of his cell in his jacket pocket. Glancing at the screen, he stopped in his tracks. The text read, 'voices.' It was from Sam.

Voices? Dean glanced over his shoulder again, trying to catch Sam's eyes. The EMF hadn't read a thing the entire evening, but then the afternoon had started slow, too, and look where that ended up. He started walking again, typing quickly with his thumb. 

'Bad?'

A second later, 'Miners.'

Dean noted the time on his phone and the continued silence of the EMF. 'Pain?'

'No.' The reply was quick enough that he knew Sam wasn't lying. Sam always hesitated before lying to Dean, weighing his options, and it always got him caught.

'OK,' he sent, and shut his phone, gripping it in his hand to know immediately if Sam called again. He took another three steps down the hall, and then stopped. The meter in his hand came alive, buzzing up to its highest register.

He looked up at the windows and then counted the doors back to where he was standing. Six on the left and six on the right… but…

Dean shoved the phone back in his pocket, turned, and yelled straight back to his brother, causing the guests to jump in surprise and the artificial fear amplified by the situation.

"Sam! How many doors on this floor?"

Sam had started moving towards him as soon as the meter sounded, and was pushing through the crowd when he replied. "Fifty. Twenty-four in each wing, twelve on the left and twelve on the right, plus the master suite and the library on either end. Why?"

Dean rubbed the back of his neck as Sam came up beside him. "Yeah, that's what I had, too. See anything wrong?"

Sam looked around, counting the doors, and whistled softly. "The library's missing."

Dean opened the door of the last room on the left, letting it swing wide before peering in. Both brothers were ignoring the tourists, who were whispering excitedly to each other. Sam moved to the door on the right, copying his brother's movement. The room had window along both walls, as though it had always been the last room in the wing. The side stairs should have been there, across from the library doors.

Dean stepped back into the hall, looking up and down the hall critically. This wasn't something they'd ever encountered before. Objects moving, yes, but never _architecture._

"The library used to be where the grand staircase is now, in the middle of the building. We doubled the size of the mansion when we renovated, added this whole wing. The library was disassembled and placed at the end of the new construction." Walker had come up behind them, looking spooked but coherent enough to make a genuinely helpful comment. For a minute, Dean almost didn't hate him.

"So, that could be why the library moved, but what about the side stairs?" Dean wondered, trying to make a mental map of the mansion as it was before the renovation.

Walker shrugged, "There didn't used to be any stairs except the center staircase and the servants' stairs, in the back. We added the side flights as fire escapes."

Entering the conversation, Sam nodded towards the crowd. "Mr. Walker, it might be best if you and your guests went back down to the first floor or the lobby for the night. If whole rooms are moving, then this may be more than a simple haunting. Has anything like this ever happened before?"

"Lord, no! Just doors slamming and lights flickering. This—this here has never happened before. Didn't even know it could happen. I'll take everyone to the dining room, have some pillows and blankets brought down. Think the staff should come down, too?" Walker's manipulative façade had disappeared in the light of shifting walls and staircases.

Dean nodded firmly. "Yes, and keep everyone down there. Sam and I will try to figure out what's going on."

Walker considered the two men before him, both alert and deadly, and nodded. They watched him herd his groaning guests down the hall and around the corner. Once alone, they glanced at each other, wariness and reassurance passing at once between them.

"Still hearing the voices?" Dean asked, looking into the changed rooms critically.

"Yeah. All variations on the same theme: kill the witch."

Dean almost smirked. "So, to recap, our beds moved this morning, you channeled Laura Bennet and an episode from our childhood this afternoon, at which point I also had a freak moment, now entire rooms are moving and you're picking up _The Wizard of Oz_ on your psychic FM station? Is that everything?"

Sam thought about his bruises. _Not exactly everything. _"Sounds like it."

Dean turned on his heel, staring up into Sam's face. "What? What else is there?"

_How does he do that?_ Sam looked innocent. "Nothing, why?"

"You hesitated. You only hesitate when you lie to me. What else is there, Sam?"

Sam sighed. Some things changed, but Dean would never be one of them. "Remember all those bruises I had after the poltergeist when I was eight? From my vision earlier? Well, they kind of… came back. The sprained wrist, too."

Dean looked at him for a moment, wearing the same expression he did when the Impala made a strange noise. "Came back? You mean… you have the bruises _now_?"

Sam opened his mouth to reply, but Dean was already moving, stepping behind him and pulling up his sweatshirt to see his back, without so much as asking permission or a word of warning.

Dean studied the bruises for a long moment, pressing an especially dark spot briefly, pulling back and lowering the shirt at Sam's flinch. "When were you going to tell me about this, Sam?"

Dean's voice was low and calm, and the lack of obscenities worried Sam more than a little. He opened his mouth to reply, but Dean spoke right over him, still furiously quiet.

"Never mind, we don't have time for that right now. I'd rather know how the hell a vision could cause—cause _this,_" he ran his eyes over the bruises again, raw worry in his gaze. "This happened _fourteen years _ago!"

Sam looked thoughtful, staring contemplatively at the place where the library used to be. "Maybe it's this house. The library moved back to where it was, or so we assume, anyway, and the stairs disappeared. I'm hearing the voices of the miners during the riot. The past is manifesting itself physically in the present… like the bruises."

Dean looked down at his now silent meter, then glanced up and down the hall before returning his gaze to his younger brother. "That's pretty far-fetched, even for us."

"Compared to a library moving? Not really."

Dean did smirk this time, rubbing the back of his neck wearily. "Well, when you put it that way. Come on, let's go see where the library landed."

Dean moved down the hall, and Sam followed a step behind and a half step to the left, a pattern put down in childhood and never forgotten.

Stopping short, Sam tilted his head, listening intently. He'd been tuning the voices out, but his name had drawn his attention back to the angry cacophony.

"Unnatural! Abomination! What do you See, Samuel? What do you See?"

Sensing his brother's pause, Dean turned around. "Oh, no, now what?" he muttered, seeing the look on Sam's face.

Meeting his older brother eyes, Sam grimaced expressively. "The voices just got personal. They called me Samuel."

Dean frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. "So probably not the miners, then. Or not _just_ the miners. Great. Wonderful. Look, let's just find the library before anything else happens."

Sam nodded softly, following Dean down the hall and trying to block out the dark voices stepping in their shadows.


End file.
